The Great Migration
[By Kenton Rambsy]
Utilizing a database of 100 novels reveals useful ways of considering the central topic of migration in African American literature. Mapping novel settings and the movements of protagonists across different geographic locations provides general readers and scholars important opportunities to consider how migration has emerged in the literary imagination of black novelists.
The Great Migration’s movements of two million African Americans from southern states to the Midwestern, Western, and Northeastern regions of the country during the early twentieth century are reflected in African American novels, particularly among black male protagonists. James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Langston Hughes Not Without Laughter (1930), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) all feature men making migrations to the Northern cities, specifically New York City or Chicago. New York and Chicago stand out as popular destinations for black people during the Great Migration, and have remained as recurring settings for black novelists.
More than 54 of the 100 novels in our database are set in urban areas or have major scenes taking place in cities. New York City and Chicago are the settings or sites of scenes in more than 27 novels in our database. At least one novel, Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (1999), never identifies New York City by name as its setting, but the fictional metropolis featured in Whitehead’s narrative is definitely based on the Big Apple.
The recurring focus on Chicago and New York City in novels suggests the importance of those cities in the literary imagination of black America. Moreover, the prevalence of urban areas as settings for novels indicates that writers view city environments as fertile grounds for positioning their narratives.
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Tools used to analyze your content
Hi Kenton,
Very interesting post. I am curious about what kinds of tools you are using to work with the 100 novels, and about the kind of structure are you using to hold your data. Do you have full-text in the database, or just annotations about the works? Have you used (or are you considering using) any text-mining applications to extract or analyze the data? Our next digital humanities seminar is going to be about using some of these tools to analyze and visualize a database of Greek literature. He's asking different questions than you are, but you might find the methodology interesting.
Hi Brian, I responded on the
Hi Brian,
I responded on the blog. Sorry for the delay.
sounds great!
hi kenton,
i'd like to echo brian's question about the tools you utilized to analyze the texts themselves. i tried a similar project with a james baldwin novels (go tell it on the mountain) wherein i attempted to map where sound erupted in the text. so if there was a sound of a tambourine, i would index that it took place in church, in harlem as an example. this, of course, was a ridiculous and daunting task because there was entirely too much sound emanating from the text. so i sorta abandoned the idea...until i read your post. i'd love to know more about this tool...and if you've put it to other textual uses yet.
also, what do you think it says about narrativity that african-american literature is colored with movement and is this a result of the great migration or just another trope of the already available concept of the necessity of movement for black folks after the fact of Middle Passage? anyway...good times...good stuff...can't wait to hear more!
Hi, I reponded on the blog.
Hi, I reponded on the blog. Sorry for the delay.
My apologies for such a delayed response
Greetings All,
First, let me apologize for the very, very delayed response to these posts. For some reason, I have not seen these comments. Let me attempt to answer you all's questions:
Brian
1) Do you have full-text in the database, or just annotations about the works?
re: I do indeed have a full-text of each novel covered in this project (VIA the Project on the History of Black Writing). In addition, I make annotations that I think will be helpful.
2) Have you used (or are you considering using) any text-mining applications to extract or analyze the data?
re: This is certainly the goal, at some point in time; however, all of these texts are not digital--they're hard copies. So, the first task would be to digitize the collection. In the meantime, I am trying to gather as much information as possible on these "text-mining" tools to best understand how to implement/use the technology in the project. I'm sure it would save me soooooo much time when looking for information as well as double-checking bits and pieces of information.
Ashon
Ashon, certainly, this project is a very daunting task. Because of that, I limited my search to only cover about 6 dozen factors related to the authors, the novels, and novel characters. Still, this took me about 5 months to collect the data (and, I'm still adding on to the data on a monthly basis).
I originally identified a series of factors that related to the lives of black writers (i.e. birth date/death date, education, notable fellowships/awards, main place of residence, notable places of travel, etc). I next decided to focus on the publication/circulation information concerning the novel (i.e. publication date, publication release date, publishing house, wikipedia page, has it been adapted into a movie? has the novel won an award, etc.). Next, I looked at character protagonists (i.e. sex of protag, age of protag at the beginning/end of novel, protags place of res
idence, notable travels, education, etc.). Now, I know that was a lot to say; but, that is where I started. WOW!
Now, what do I think this says about the overall nature of Af-Am lit? Well, I don't think my findings say very much because the literary tropes and criticism that surrounds Af-Am lit is very broad; however, I do think my findings say a lot about what types of novels become apart of the cannon. For instance, I notice all of the novels in my project present stories about black people who are trying to liberate themselves from troubled circumstances. If we think back in literary history, we know that slave narratives became best sellers and seemed to frame larger audiences expectations of black writing--you know, having political, liberatory, social, racial themes.
I hope this was helpful. I certainly look forward to future dialogues.